The Sino-Indian War of 1962 is not a happy memory. It is remembered for the humiliation of India’s total defeat, the betrayal of Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai and the devastating personal blow it dealt Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It left us minus large chunks of territory and an inability to admit this that has resulted in the ridiculous policy of having to stamp every book and magazine that does admit this with the assertion that they are incorrect.

From October 20 when the Chinese launched attacks in the west (Aksai Chin) and east (Northeast Frontier Agency, or Nefa, today’s Arunachal Pradesh) till November 19 when Premier Zhou En-lai announced a unilateral ceasefire, the war lasted less than a month, yet ended an era.

The taint of 1962 has coloured all its retellings, which have tended to be dominated by vested interests: army generals seeking to exculpate themselves, anti-Nehruvians revelling in his discomfiture, leftists trying to square their dilemma by justifying the Chinese action. Yet 50 years later it is time to look at it again and see if, in fact, its effects were as calamitous as they seemed at that time.

Fractured Country

Early 1962 saw India’s third general election, which the Congress won easily. Yet the election was unsettlingly divisive, with old Congress stalwarts like JB Kripalani and C Rajagopalachari turning against the party. Kripalani’s battle, in North Bombay, was particularly bruising, since it pitted him against VK Krishna Menon, the defence minister, whose arrogance, apparently impregnable closeness to Nehru and violent anti-Americanism had made him much disliked and distrusted both abroad and in India, including by many Congress colleagues. But Nehru threw his weight behind Menon’s campaign and he won a sweeping victory.

The election also brought to parliament the Akali Dal and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), new parties with troubling agendas. The Akalis wanted a Sikh majority state while the DMK wanted an even more ambitious Dravida Nadu to unite the southern states in some semblance of independence. Coming soon after the agitations that lead to linguistic states in 1956, and the division of Bombay into Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960, and along with deep unrest in Nagaland, this raised the spectre of regional disintegration of India. The Congress response was to push the 16th Amendment which made it obligatory for public officials to swear allegiance to the Republic of India.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) came second in the elections, with 29 seats to the Congress’ 361. This made them the lead Opposition party, but also bought their internal divisions to the fore. Under the moderate and nationalist SA Dange the CPI had occasionally supported Nehru, but this policy was now strongly challenged by a hard-left faction lead by younger leaders like Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet (ironically, both advocates of left moderation in later life). According to declassified CIA files on the CPI, another divisive issue was, prophetically, the Indo-China border, where the hard left voted to support the Chinese position.

Debates, and More Debates

This was at a meeting in 1961, which shows how one part of the mythology that has grown around the 1962 war, which is that it was a total surprise, is incorrect. In fact, the border dispute and the ongoing skirmishes linked to it had been the subject of much debate in the Indian parliament and media. Parties like the Jana Sangh, still in disrepute due to alleged links with the Hindu extremists who killed Gandhi, seized the nationalist card as a way to raise their profile — one ardent anti-China advocate was a young Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The media too, already charged by the Indian takeover of Goa in late 1961, was also inclined to be unyielding on the border.

Ramachandra Guha, in his history of independent India, quotes Steve Hoffman’s work which suggests that the Indian government’s policy of dealing with an issue by producing white papers for debate was a constraint: “Had the border dispute remained private the prime minister could have used the quieter back-channels of diplomatic compromise.” With parliament and media in full cry Nehru would have found it hard to do this, though this wasn’t something the Chinese were inclined to appreciate. But even when private talks between Nehru and Chou took place in 1960 there was a basic difference in attitude which may have prevented a solution.

The Chinese position all along was pragmatic: they wanted a route to Tibet through Aksai Chin and were not interested in whether the facts of history, in a region where this had always been unclear, supported them. Guha refers to secret records of the talks which show Chou stating, fairly clearly, that China would give up claims to Nefa in exchange for Aksai Chin. But Nehru insisted on defending the details of history, like the McMahon Line and historical texts that referred to the area. This may have been from consideration for public sentiment, or for the Dalai Lama who had taken refuge in India (another flashpoint for the Chinese), but it also possibly stemmed from his image of being a principled international statesman.

Verbal Volleys

Almost every account of modern international diplomacy admits to one feeling about Indian leaders: exasperation at how much they lectured the rest of the world. Nehru’s high reputation meant that he was always listened to with real respect, but this was wearing thin, and his peremptory action in Goa raised charges of hypocrisy that were hard to duck. Even more, Menon’s diatribes had annoyed people like the Americans beyond endurance.

JK Galbraith, the American economist and ambassador to India during the crisis, put the matter neatly in his entertaining Ambassador’s Journal: “Indians are the world’s safest object of animosity.” This was the downside of non-alignment: you had no effective supporters, since other non-aligned nations could or would only wring their hands and look away.

And while its true that Nehru’s non-alignment may have allowed for hopes of help from those friendly Russians, this is where the 1962 war falls into a historical coincidence often overlooked in India: it took place at exactly the same time as the Cuban missile crisis. Galbraith describes his confusion at having to deal with “a considerable war on my hands without a single telegram, letter, telephone call or other communication of guidance”.

At the Crossroads

The Russians, who were at the losing end in Cuba, must have been even more at a loss, and were also constrained by the demands of international communist co-operation. It must have been a terrible shock to Menon when the Russian response finally came as just a general appeal to both sides to make piece, and no firm support of India. The Times of India headline “India Dismayed at Soviet Backing to Chinese” came on October 26, the day after one of the worst days of the war, when Tawang was captured.

This was Galbraith’s opportunity. He saw it as a way to subtly shift opinion in favour of the Americans, by providing aid in discreet, face-saving ways for Nehru. If there was one big gain from 1962 it was this — the acknowledgement of our common interests with the Americans. It helped that it went hand in hand with the discomfiture of the CPI. Caught between the Chinese sympathies of the hard left, and the fear of being labelled as Chinese agents, the CPI politburo simply came to a standstill, issuing no statement for days after the attack.

But as Dange’s side had foreseen, this was still disastrous. Because once the attacks began, public opinion burst out in support of the state. State-level CPI units, closer to ground realities, realised the danger and started condemning the invasion, not waiting for directions. This still didn’t stop many communists from being arrested after a state of emergency was declared on October 26 — the first time the Indian government ever used this power, and the only time other than Indira Gandhi’s emergency in 1975.

The DMK was less equivocal. “When the country is in danger, for us to advocate separatism would be to give way to the foreigner,” said its head CN Annadurai at a speech on Madras’ Marina Beach, and the Dravida Nadu demand was permanently dropped, with the party focussing instead on resisting the imposition of Hindi. MG Ramachandran, the film star who was also the party’s rising star, donated `75,000 to the National Defence Fund (NDF).

The public feeling was overwhelming. Army recruitment centres were flooded with volunteers, and women took lessons in rifle practice. Bollywood was not far behind MGR: Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Meena Kumari gave `50,000 each. Women donated jewellery — led by Indira Gandhi, whose contribution, the Economic Times reported on November 2 weighed 336 grams. The All India Hotel and Halwai Federation announced donations of packets of sweets for the jawans, and race courses chipped in as well, with the Times reporting that a percentage of the tote would go to the NDF.

Markets React

ET was barely a year old then, but already firmly committed to opening up the economy. An edit on October 21 noted that the war was showing up the “grave deficiencies” of the Plan which had lead to a plateauing of industrial production just when the war was increasing demand all around, but, “there have already been indications that the private sector would be only too willing to play an effective role in the defence of the country”.

The stock market crashed, with the ET Ordinary Share Index falling from 121.6 points at the beginning of September to 108.1 on November 6, a day when stock exchanges suspended trading. But the ET Commodity Index stayed strong at around 116 points through that period, proving the dismal truth that, occasionally, wars can be good for the economy.

Once it got over its humiliation, the army also benefited from the 1962 war. It was never entirely true that it was unprepared, but its resources were wrongly deployed, nearly all focussed on the Pakistani borders. Guha points out, in fact, that the Chinese border was technically not the army’s responsibility, but that of the Intelligence Bureau, with armed support from paramilitary detachments like the Assam Rifles in the east and Central Reserve Police Force in the west.

Chinese Chequers

BK Nehru, India’s ambassador in Washington, DC, discovered one consequence of this when the conflict broke out and he needed maps to help him figure out where the fighting was happening. But his military attachés told him Intelligence had classified the maps as confidential and they did not have clearance to see them: “I told them to go to National Geographic to buy the maps they wanted — which they did!”

It was this sort of absurdity that 1962 ended. The Indian Army redeployed, reinvested in learning how to fight at high altitudes, and how to make best advantage of terrain.

The army was perhaps driven by the knowledge that, bad as 1962 had been, it could have been far worse. For one, China-Pakistan relationships were still very nascent, and Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s president, influenced by the British and Americans, resisted the temptation to join the attack, which would have meant war on all our borders.

The second was the simple fact that, having got Aksai Chin, which was always their main interest, the Chinese almost scornfully handed Nefa back, retreating behind the McMahon Line (which they continued to describe as illegal). Brigadier JP Dalvi, the most senior officer taken prisoner, who would write the one blisteringly honest account in his Himalayan Blunder, recalled “the most humiliating moment of my 7-month captivity” when the Chinese major in charge of him informed him: “Now we have decided to go back as we do not want to settle the border problem by force. We have proved you are no match for mighty China.”

Whether we are or are not a match for China, we are certainly better prepared — and with less illusions — than we were then. Defeats can never be pleasant, but in 1962 at least, India suffered one from which, just possibly, the country might have become the long-term winner.